When Will This Torture End?

The mansion had never felt colder.

It wasn't the frost creeping in through cracks in the walls or the endless blizzard outside. It was the silence—the heavy, oppressive weight of despair that hung over everything. Claire was nowhere to be found, and I knew why. She was hiding again, retreating into herself.

I sat in the dim light of the surveillance room, staring blankly at the monitors. Tessa had been gone for hours, likely indulging in another one of her "missions." The blood on her boots from last time still hadn't been scrubbed off the floor.

The screens flickered with the familiar sights of the mansion's perimeter—empty snowfields, jagged ice, and a single figure slumped in the shadows of the training room. Claire.

I found her there almost every night. She didn't train anymore; she just sat, her broad shoulders hunched, her once-proud posture reduced to something small and fragile.

I couldn't stand it.